IQ heritability estimation : analyzing genetically-informative data with structural equation models. 'Estimaci??n de la heredabilidad del CI : analizando datos gen??ticamente informativos con modelos de ecuaciones estructurales'

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n. Resumen tambi??n en ingl??s

Turning Point zapper test of moment by moment voting

This short 3 min video shows how Camtasia Studio can be used to record the audio of a lecture alongside the moment-by-moment votes recorded using Turning Point.

Electronic voting systems in undergraduate teaching

One of the major differences undergraduates experience during the transition to university is the style of teaching. In schools and colleges most students study key stage 5 subjects in relatively small informal groups where teacher–pupil interaction is encouraged and two-way feedback occurs through question and answer type delivery. On starting in HE students are amazed by the sizes of the classes. For even a relatively small chemistry department with an intake of 60-70 students, biologists, pharmacists, and other first year undergraduates requiring chemistry can boost numbers in the lecture hall to around 200 or higher. In many universities class sizes of 400 are not unusual for first year groups where efficiency is crucial. Clearly the personalised classroom-style delivery is not practical and it is a brave student who shows his ignorance by venturing to ask a question in front of such an audience. In these environments learning can be a very passive process, the lecture acts as a vehicle for the conveyance of information and our students are expected to reinforce their understanding by ‘self-study’, a term, the meaning of which, many struggle to understand. The use of electronic voting systems (EVS) in such situations can vastly change the students’ learning experience from a passive to a highly interactive process. This principle has already been demonstrated in Physics, most notably in the work of Bates and colleagues at Edinburgh.1 These small hand-held devices, similar to those which have become familiar through programmes such as ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ can be used to provide instant feedback to students and teachers alike. Advances in technology now allow them to be used in a range of more sophisticated settings and comprehensive guides on use have been developed for even the most techno-phobic staff.

Voting rights of refugees

The book develops a novel legal argument about the voting rights of recognised 1951 Geneva Convention Refugees. The main normative contention is that such refugees should have the right to vote in the political community where they reside, assuming that the political community is a democracy and that its citizens have the right to vote. The basis of this contention is that the right to political participation in some political community is a basic right from the point of view of dignity and the protection of one’s interests. Due to their unique political predicament, 1951 Geneva Convention Refugees are a special category of non-citizen residents. They are unable to participate in elections of their state of origin, do not enjoy its diplomatic protection and consular assistance abroad, and – most fundamentally – are unable or unwilling, owing to a well-founded fear of persecution, to return to it; thus, they are in limbo for a potentially protracted period. Refugees, too, deserve to have a place in the world in the Arendtian sense, where their opinions are significant and their actions are effective. Their state of asylum is, for the time being, the only community in which there is any realistic prospect of political participation on their part.

A survey study of voting behavior and political participation in Zhejiang

Two existing models are used to conceptualize the constrained and limited participation in the communist system. The mobilization model suggests that participation was so mobilized by the party/state that it was largely meaningless, while the disengagement model supports the idea that many communist citizens adopted non-participatory behaviors such as non-voting as a means of protest. This paper attempts to demonstrate the importance of a third model – the emergent democratic culture model. The survey results show that the participation index is in proportion to the number of elections in which a villager is involved; and a growing number of voters in Zhejiang are developing citizen-initiated participation, with rights consciousness.

This research finds that the level of participation is influenced by three major factors: the perceived worth of the election itself, regularity of electoral procedures, and the fairness of electoral procedures. It also finds that parochial political culture and political apathy still exist, and the emergent democratic consciousness falls short of an ideal democratic standard. While a highly democratic culture helps to develop village democracy, the apathetic attitude continues to support the authoritarian leadership and structure in many villages. The paper also gives an account of survey research in rural China and offers a thoughtful critique of the use of voting and non-voting as the sole indicator of political participation.

An experiment using ICT to investigate pure voting power

We present an experiment to evaluate the accuracy of power indices by measuring the political power embodied in blocks of votes per se. The experiment incorporates several players interacting in lCT chat rooms under supervision. The chat rooms and the selection process reduce or eliminate other political forces leaving logroIIing as the primary political force.

An experimental investigation of pure voting power

We evaluate the accuracy of power indices by experimentally measuring the political power embodied in blocks of votes per se.  The experiment incorporates several players interacting in online chat rooms under supervision.  The chat rooms and the selection process reduce or eliminate extraneous political forces leaving logrolling as the primary political force.  Results show that two standard power indices reflect voting power while other power indices and proportionality do not.

Informed principal, moral hazard, and the value of a more informative technology

We analyze a principal-agent model with moral hazard in which the principal has private information about the technology. We characterize Perfect Bayesian Equilibria of the contracting game that possess the following properties: (i) a principal with a more informative technology ends up earning less profits than a principal with a less informative one does; (ii) compared to the complete information case, the actions implemented by the privately informed principal can be distorted; (iii) the agent can end up being better off when the principal has private information.

Hybrid methods to select informative gene sets in microarray data classification

One of the key applications of microarray studies is to select and classify gene expression profiles of cancer and normal subjects. In this study, two hybrid approaches–genetic algorithm with decision tree (GADT) and genetic algorithm with neural network (GANN)–are utilized to select optimal gene sets which contribute to the highest classification accuracy. Two benchmark microarray datasets were tested, and the most significant disease related genes have been identified. Furthermore, the selected gene sets achieved comparably high sample classification accuracy (96.79% and 94.92% in colon cancer dataset, 98.67% and 98.05% in leukemia dataset) compared with those obtained by mRMR algorithm. The study results indicate that these two hybrid methods are able to select disease related genes and improve classification accuracy.

The Influence of Gender and Facial Appearance on Voting Practices

Women’s faces tend to naturally retain more neonate features than men. These features, such as a greater eye height, a smaller nose area, and a wider smile, would cause women to have more immature faces than males. Interestingly, women who have these facial features are often perceived as more attractive than women with mature facial features. These findings imply that women would be judged less competent than men, and that immature-faced women would be perceived as less competent and more attractive than mature-faced females. Given the direction of political leadership in our country, this has interesting implications for females that are vying for leadership positions. Thus, our study examined the effects of both candidate gender and facial features on voting likelihood, and perceptions of attractiveness and competence, by pairing pictures with neutral party platforms.